Entangled Existence: Posthuman Ecologies in Nathaniel Rich’s “Hermie”

Abstract

The posthuman shift signaled by what Latour in Down to Earth refers to as “The New Climatic Regime” (91) requires that we sober up to the entanglement of our existence and to its irremissible dependency on the triumph of other actors in the non-human world. Considering the extent of the anthropogenic climate disruption, this shift indicates a deeper ontological change from the primacy of the cogito that has dominated our relations to the non-human world to its immanence or, in other words, a giant, backbreaking leap from human to posthuman ecologies. Departing from a holistic approach to environmental crisis and different theoretical topologies associated with Latour and new materialism, I will first examine the transformative nature of this shift, while also broaching new ethical imaginaries that may be required by the imperatives of our changing climate. The affective evasions and resistances this shift inevitably produces will then be explored through Nathaniel Rich’s short story ‘Hermie’ (2011) that focuses on bad faith with regard to climate crisis, its demands within the academic community and its commitment to biocentric change. In order to develop an alternate ecological reading of the story, I will use Kristeva’s conceptual repertoire as well as the alternative economies of Deleuzoguattarian thought that will help me reveal the extent of self-deception climate emergency elicits in order to maintain the authorship of the cogito and the imperatives of our economic existence. Rich’s short story reveals just how impossible the ontological change we face appears to be and how ingrained and jealously kept our prerogatives are. And yet, it is precisely these prerogatives that will have to give way to the new demands of our entangled present.